Simple “easy to remember” & SECURE Passwords

Submitted by Ethan

Today I woke up to one of the worst things that could happen in this day and age… a truly terrible occurence that I wouldn’t wish on my worst nightmare—well, I probably wouldn’t care it if happened to my worst nightmare but close—... ready for it?

My personal Gmail account was hacked & hijacked!

It was one of those really nasty hacks where a worm emailed everyone I have ever emailed during the entire time I’ve had this email account. The subject read: “Dear Friends” which made it super sneaky in that most of my friends opened the email. Luckily, it was a sales email and nothing “Trojan Horse” about it that would infect their accounts too.

The body of the email talked about how I had just bought a TV at a great price from this website in China, that the link in the email actually took you to, so you too could buy a great, cheap TV! Most of my friends caught that the writing of the email wasn’t how I write but some fell for it.

I got emails back asking if I had changed jobs or “What kind of TV did you get?”... as I said, a very sneaky email hack attack indeed.

Anyway, that brings us to an article that I want to point you to from Slate.com that details how to create really solid, hard to hack passwords for all of your email, social media and Internet accounts. We’ve all got numerous accounts floating around on the web, it’s time to really protect them. It’s a great article and I used the technique it teaches to create a new and improved password for my “on life support” email account.

Comments

To secure password steps are as follows:-
1 Do not use personal information.
You should never use personal information as a part of your password. It is very easy for someone to guess things like your last name, pet’s name, child’s birth date and other similar details.
2. Do not use real words.

Well, that bad thing happened to me once too. Since nothing is entirely secured in technology bounded world like worldwideweb, recalling a password is truly essential, especially those students in online schools, who are highly dependent on several online accounts.

As far as I know, whenever assigning a password, you should never use information that is obviously about you, like birthday, parent’s names, or something like that. This way securing your account is far tighten, but remembering it once lost is more than just a challenging task.

I tend to use one password to the most sensitive sites, like my banks, and I use a general easier password for sites I don’t care if they are hacked into. I probably should create a better password that can be adjusted for each site.